Here is a Wikipedia page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Susanne_Edgar ) about the woman who wrote it. When I looked for it five years ago on the internet, the poem was not easy to find, and there was no biography of Mary Edgar available online. I had to go the library to find any information.

actually, we said:

I will follow the upward road today;

I will keep my face to the light.

I will think high thoughts as I go my way

and do what I know is right.

I will look for the flowers by the side of the road;

I will laugh and love and be strong.

I will try to lighten another's load this day as I go along.

It was obviously passed on to Moses Brown as a folk tradition, with slight changes from oral transmission, rather than in a written form.